I was brought up Catholic. I went to a Lutheran service. I consider/ed myself agnostic not quite atheist. I like the traditions of the church. My two children have been baptised. And I threw beautiful parties for them. Parties that took me months to plan. Parties where I made elaborate cakes and sewed cloth napkins. Maybe I like parties more than traditions. I was a theology major at Boston College. I probably would accurately consider myself a spiritualist. I don’t usually pray, but I meditate. I believe in a connected energy. I’m not real sure what I believe really. I always said I would like to teach my kids religion and bring them up in one, because it is easier to be born within something and come to know it and either embrace it later or reject it later, but it is harder to just be brought up without it and then try to come to know it. That is not my only reason, but one of them, good or not.

I could probably write pages and pages of posts about religion. I could come at it from lots of different angles. The history of, the validity of, the healing power, my past relationship with it, my current etc. I don’t have the time or the energy (or the knowledge-really) to formulate my thoughts into any real sense.

Anyway, as you know, I have been seeking professional help to cope with the grieving. However, the financial cost of that is starting to become prohibitive. In the days immediately following the loss, I reached out to a pregnancy crisis center. Actually, it was one I was familiar with, as they initially helped me with my first pregnancy. I always thought of a pregnancy crisis center as a resource for young women/girls who find themselves pregnant and alone, without money, young etc. I never thought to reach out to them for my last pregnancy. But HG should probably count as a crisis pregnancy. Anyway, I digress.

The resource center is certainly faith-based, and they have an agenda. But there doesn’t seem to be any organization offering counseling or support to women that aren’t faith-based. I meet with a woman, and she is very kind and another person to speak to . She offers to pray for me. Sometimes it’s comforting, sometimes it’s not. Mostly it is though. I can’t necessarily apply all she says for me. And I don’t know if I buy Jesus as the solution to my problems and pain. I selectivly apply the things she says, if they make sense to me. Not trying to offend anyone here, again, just relaying my truth.

Sometimes I say, I don’t even care if, religion, God, Jesus, any of it is true, but hey if it helps me feel better… I want the peace others have. I want to surround myself with loving people like this woman. She says she is filled with the love of God, then hey sign me up. I want what she’s having. I am ready to drink the cool-aid, I want to go back into the matrix or maybe it’s enlightenment I seek. My history with religion would certainly show I have been seeking and struggling with this journey for a long time. I asked the woman if she thinks that is a disingenuous reason to seek out faith and go to church. She doesn’t think it is. She says this is often the very reason people do seek out the church. When they are hurting most. I guess that seems true enough. My husband is of the same mind as me in regards to all this (and in the past I would have to club and drag him to church with me).

So off we went. The opening song at church and the following sermon was titled “Breathe In, Breathe Out.” I about died. Too coincidental to ignore. I cried, but I didn’t feel that sad. Just cathartic maybe. Perhaps it was a sign. Maybe I am being led here. Maybe the Heavens are after all trying to speak to me.

I don’t know if faith is the ultimate thing that will bring about healing. I don’t know if it will bring about peace for me. It is hard. When a natural loss occurs I think it is a little easier to find peace in a divine plan, etc. (not that it lessens the pain), but provides comfort possibly. This wasn’t a natural loss though. And medical reason aside, there is a lot of guilt that accompanies my loss, as I’ve stated. This wasn’t the divine’s doing. It was mine. So is there peace and comfort in faith? That remains to be seen.

I am going to participate in this abortion healing program her church runs. I’m skeptical. She says there isn’t a woman who has participated who hasn’t felt healed after. That’s a pretty big claim. I didn’t want to burst her bubble, but I wanted to tell her I would probably be the first who didn’t come out whole and healed. I wanted to know how many of the women who have gone through this program, truly wanted a baby? How many named their child and spoke to it? I wanted the true statistics, of how many shared their news with everyone they knew because of the pure joy in their heart? I wanted the scientific facts and data, as I always do, so I could definitivly determine if this would really work. But of course, I didn’t want to seem rude, so I just nodded and proverbially threw my hands up. That’s not to say that I won’t enter into it with an open mind. I certainly will. Like I said, if this works, sign me up.

I will be sure to write about the process.

***UPDATE*** The song is actually called “You are my God” by Nicol Sponberg and the beggining lyrics are “breathe in, breathe out”

It was written by a woman who lost her infant to SIDS, its not a wonder that it speaks to me then.

After my experience, I sought out professional help in the form of conventional counseling. I noticed that many of the psychologists tried to bring me to a place of healing by convincing me to adopt their point of view regarding abortion. It was a bad time for me to be intrigued by a novel approach. Otherwise I would have kept notes, blogged about it, and laughed at them. I’m kind of a jerk sometimes. I felt how I felt and was being told my child was a choice or a mere notion and therefore nothing to grieve about really. It didn’t seem honest, and had a dark ickiness to it that I was learning to avoid. So I crawled out of their offices leaving them behind like outgrown snake skin. Naturally, I then tried the sectarian “healing” programs, but I was like you. I had wanted my baby from the start. I had announced the pregnancy, held a celebratory family dinner for the occasion, etc. The sectarian set told me Jesus had assumed all of my guilt, and therefore I was off the hook. But they didn’t get it. If guilt was the only problem, perhaps. But I had loved my child, wanted my child, had wanted our future together, and even so my child had been killed. So I felt like a mother whose child had been destroyed by a drunk driver: outraged, heartbroken. My pain was complicated. The issue of the “driver” of that “car” was just the cherry on top of it all. I couldn’t assimilate it. And the lay “counselors” didn’t seem to have an algorithm for it. Another issue I had with them was that I was being asked to “let my baby go.” I wasn’t interested in that. I’m still not. That child was and is and always will be a part of me, an unseen part of my family, an emotional whisper in every picture. I neither want to forget nor let go. And I’ve come to realize I don’t have to. I just have to learn to live with the situation. Find a new normal. And I have. I do. I will. But back to the sectarian programs. One of them had an elaborate dramatization where participants had to leave a doll on an alter. This description turned me off so bad I didn’t even go. It kind of disgusted me to tell you the truth. I’m literal; I hadn’t lost a doll. And my pain was not about letting go. My pain was related to not being able to get something very precious back. It didn’t seem honest to me. Eventually, I was berated when all failed. I was stubborn in my love and in wanting the connection to my child. When knowing and accepting Christ’s great sacrifice didn’t “heal” me, I was belittled, admonished. I was told that I was making myself bigger than Christ. That I was rejecting Him and His forgiveness. Luckily, I knew that was preposterous, and I was neither convinced to adopt their point of view nor turned off of Christ. I knew these were fallible people, same as me, and they were exasperated, much as doctors are when they don’t know how to heal you and so BLAME you. Oh yes, I was learning a lot from HG. So neither of these things worked for me: conventional secular therapy nor sectarian therapy. I think most of these folks had good intentions, but ultimately I found that I was going to have to go through the experience in all its nasty horror just the way it was with no real buffer to hide behind. HG taught me many things, and one big whopper was that the best way out was always through. Man, that sucked. But there it was. I was going to have to find way through that was honest for me. And 14 years later here I am. It’s still a part of my experience. And my child is still my child. And God is as great as He ever was. It happened. And I didn’t invent anything to dupe myself out of the agony, because I couldn’t. If I could have, I probably would have done so; I’m no masochist. I just went through it, and when it was ugly, it was ugly. I didn’t paint a smile on it. But I didn’t have to. I didn’t have other children to be strong for. I didn’t really have any necessities whatever. So I have no experience with that. That being said, I wish you the best. And I hope that the sectarian thing brings you comfort and that your experiences with it are not like mine. But if they are, I would like to opine that there is nothing wrong with you. If you are the first one that was not “healed” by their program, and let me just say, that was said to me too, there is nothing wrong with you, and that is certainly not your only hope. And finally, whatever they might say or do that might be wrong or injurious, it is not God’s fault. Like you, like me, like all people, they are but dust and ashes. (Gen. 18:27) We people make mistakes and we screw things up royally. Imho, it’s why we so desperately need God Whose love is bigger than our mistakes.

If they make me put a doll on an alter, I will vomit.
You have an amazing gift with words. I did tell the woman that There is no one in the program who wanted their child the way I did. I literally told everyone I came across that I was pregnant. I told my hairdresser I told a random waiter, I told family and friends. I loved this child. I sang to her. I already got the baby clothes out of the closet.
I truly think this is a unique grieving situation and doesn’t fit into any of the boxes already in place. And you are right, the driver of that car adds that extra dimension to complicate and muddle this all the more.
I’ve been directed to the website a heartbreaking choice, its similar but its not that. This is a unique and convoluted grief.
So I go into the program with an open mind, I am doubtful that it will “heal” me. I don’t think I can be “healed.” I just need to create a new life for myself and my family and figure out how to fit this new person I am, into that. But I do need some peace, because the pain being this raw everyday feels like it is going to kill me.

This is going to be a bit of a ramble, because my husband is trying to cook something and pausing every half second to ask me what to do. Sigh… Still, I do want to let you know that I’m right there with you. This IS a uniquely sucky experience. Kinda like HG. Ugh. Anyway, will send you the radio interview. I gotta say I tried the Heartbreaking Choice thing too, and that didn’t work out for me. It wasn’t my situation, and it didn’t feel like a good fit in light of what I was learning from my own experience. I had to find my way, and this wasn’t resonating; it seemed somewhat a detour for me. Which isn’t to say that it won’t work out for you. I don’t want to seem like a nattering naysayer shooting down all available options! The truth is I AM STUBBORN. VERY STUBBORN. So that’s probably why so many things didn’t help me, and I ended up dealing with it on my own. Well, not really on my own. As can be said of suffering: I spent a lot of time in a dark room with Jesus. Of course, if someone had said that to me when I was at my rawest, it most likely would have just ticked me off and made me want to smack ’em. Christ was untouchable at that time. Or rather, I was. And I was ANGRY. I spent a lot of time hating Him initially. I was processing, still reviewing what had happened from the spectrum of views. For me it was complicated for a while but in the end kind of simple. (Prov. 19:3) For me going through it meant becoming really introspective and considering my reaction and the reasons behind it. Of course I considered my circumstances and my actions, yes, duh. But that wasn’t enough for me. It was way deeper than that, and it eventually blew the lid off the world as I knew it. And in a way, spiritually and emotionally, I was awakened, reborn if you like. (For a while I was very shaky. Like a foal on new legs. I stumbled around a lot.) And while I hate what happened I am much better for it. If I could go back and change it I would obviously. No one wants this kind of crash course in life. So no, I’m not glad I lost my child that way. That part was NOT a gift. It was hell on earth. If I linger there I still cry, and who brags about that? But I can be glad of the person I have become and of the things I have learned. It was a loooong process and is still ongoing. I’m still finding my legs. But I believe I am a much more useful human being at this point. And I am very grateful for that. There is life beyond this awful, awful situation. Keep breathing, and you will find it.

I never got your email. I don’t have your email address, so I can’t send the radio interview. I listened to it again today for the first time in ages, and it touches that place deep inside me; made me cry. I don’t know if it’s right for you at this point. It took me a LONG time of punching and kicking and fighting my way through my experience and my personal perceptions to get to the point of that interview. I don’t know how you would perceive it at this point in your journey. You might not be able to relate at all. Not yet anyway. I don’t know. I’m not a gentle sort of person naturally, and I want to be careful with you. You’re going through a lot emotionally, and I know that.

Theres a reason why you attended the service titled “breathe in breath out” There is greater reason that you can understand. God is reaching out to you and the only way He can help you heal is if you reach back out to him. God has done amazing things in my marriage and in my life. I want the same for you. I want you to come to learn of a peace called God’s Peace. Its a freedom that you can’t grasp right now, but you will. Just keep reaching back to Him. He wants to help you heal.